A lot has been made about the Bible’s negative views of sex and marriage and relationships–but it has also modeled some positive views. The entire book of Song of Songs, for example, can be read straight as the love poem it is–about two lovers meeting, trysting, having sex with one another, all without being married. Interestingly, this was the most-translated book by monks in the Middle Ages–mostly to say that it was a metaphor of God’s love, of course–but it does leave one to wonder what else the monks may have been thinking. (Or maybe that’s just me.)

A lot of people who put forth that two people must wait until marriage to have sex will try to claim that such views come from an Adam-and-Eve model of sexuality (which is very cissexist and heteronormative of them, to say the least). And while starting with creation sounds like a great foundation for laying claim to something–because what better way to stake a claim to power?–it doesn’t really hold up on examination.

So, not only do Adam and Eve not get married before they have sex and have children, but also–at least one creation story doesn’t seem to require human beings to be heteronormatively paired (and thus biologically capable of reproducing together) in order to have children, thereby destroying another common argument: that sex is for procreation, and that’s why two people should wait until marriage (because all children ‘obviously’ need two [heterosexual] parents–neveryoumind cases of abuse, incest, and the like, or people who consciously choose to be single parents, or people who choose to partner but cannot procreate or do not want to procreate…..).

Ahem. Anyway.

So, no, the argument that sex-waits comes from Adam and Eve doesn’t hold up, because hey: Adam and Eve didn’t get married. And–even if they had–their marriage likely wouldn’t have looked like what we consider marriage to look like today.

So where does it come from? I argue that it comes from the pseudo-Pauline epistles. What are those? These are the letters after the seven likely letters of Paul. Most people I know raised in the Christian Church think of Paul as an anti-LGBTQI, anti-woman, anti-sex, prudish, non-inclusive, exclusive ass. I used to agree.

But.

It turns out that Paul has only 7 likely epistles, with 6 more attributed to him by admirers and one undoubtedly not by him at all. The 7 likely letters by Paul show Paul to be a pretty inclusive person–he wanted everyone to be on equal standing with one another, with no one above or below. All were to be a part of the body of Christ, with no ‘body part’ functioning in a superior manner to any other body part–because all were needed. And Paul utilized women in his ministry in very important roles, which may have angered those who came after him. 1 Timothy in particular, as well as the other Pastoral epistles, turns these verses of inclusion on their heads. Where Paul preaches for women to be cared for, the Pastoral epistles preach that the church should not provide for women unless they reach a certain age and are widows–thereby ruining many women’s chances to enter the ministry in an effective way. And where Paul taught that all were a part of the body, with no body part superior, the pseudo-Pauline epistles taught that man was the head of the woman, ruling over her, in the ‘body of Christ.’ Superiority was put in place.

The church had been providing for women’s livelihoods under Paul’s instructions, allowing some women to remain unmarried and therefore able to be ministers. But in marriages, they had duties to perform, customs to follow, and usually could not stray from those duties in order to be ministers like the men of their communities could. Thus, with women suborned through a twisting of Paul’s teachings, men could retain power.

I think this is where our ‘modern’ ideas about heteronormative, cisgender sex-waits marriage ideals comes from. And I think this is the sin. I think it twists because it unnaturally binds, shaming people who do not deserve to be shamed.

I don’t think this is what God intended. I don’t think God ever intends for us to shame one another about how and who we love, and how and with whom we have sex–so long as we’re doing so honestly and openly, with integrity. Even casual sex–that much maligned predator of all our young people!–can be healing. Just as importantly, choosing not to have sex–if we don’t want to (maybe we’re demisexual, for example)–is awesome, too. The point is that all of us get to choose, and it doesn’t have to be dependent on some arbitrary line drawn in the sand by society or by a legal body. So long as we are able to consent, then we are able to make our own choices about our sexualities and our bodies–and I think that’s how God intended it when God made such a diverse array of human beings.

So, no, I don’t think premarital sex is a sin. I think sex that is forced–rape, coercion (without it being consensual non-consent)–is sin. I think that forcing people into unnatural unions just to get their needs met is sin. I think oppressing people for power is sin. And I think we’ve been doing all of these things for centuries, while gaslighting one another and ourselves into believing the opposite–which is why there’s so much cognitive dissonance surrounding sex in our culture.

Like this:

I heard both of these two things in response to me telling people I love that I am mentally ill. The second was responding in part to Dylann Roof’s murdering 9 African-American people, and lumped all mentally ill people into this category of potential killers and haters.

Now, it’s true: any one person is a potential killer, potential hater. But that is independent of whether a person is many other things.

And we are also more likely to ‘compassionately’ ascribe mental illness to white killers, which both stigmatizes those of us who really are mentally ill and furthers the problem of racism by trying to explain away white killers’ actions as having to do with something other than murderous intentions and/or racism and/or misogyny and/or classism.

Sometimes, we use suicide as a way to explain away suspicious death, such as in the case of Sandra Bland. Not only do we contend here with racism and misogyny, but also belittling of the very real dangers of suicidal ideation and mental illness.

We, the mentally ill, aren’t convenient props to be used to explain away racism and misogyny and classism. We’re not there to give lazy writers a convenient murderer.

Using us to explain away murder, misogyny, and racism only further perpetuates the systems that keep us all chained up.

Two articles stuck out to me, personally, as they dealt with the ways that gender and race intersect, particularly in relation to this recent and the ongoing violence perpetrated against Black (and mostly female) bodies in the name of White female bodies.

The first challenged me to review my own self, as I am a white woman. Titled “I Don’t Want to Be an Excuse for Racist Violence Anymore,” the article explores Dylann Roof’s self-proclaimed motive in murdering Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Sr., Rev. Sharonda Singleton, and Myra Thompson in their church after he sat with them in Bible study for an hour in their welcome. As he shot them, Roof claimed, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country.” This article–and I–focus on the ‘our women’ part of the statement. Whose women? Which women? Most of the people Roof killed were women, after all–but they were black women, and thus beneath consideration to him. To Roof, ‘women’ means ‘white women.’

From the article:
There is a centuries-old notion that white men must defend, with lethal violence at times, the sexual purity of white women from allegedly predatory black men. And, as we saw yet again after this shooting, it is not merely a relic of America’s hideous racial past. American racism is always gendered; racism and sexism are mutually dependent, and cannot be unstitched.

The article goes on to point out that this isn’t only a black-and-white problem–that it’s a problem of white and all non-white bodies, as shown by Donald Trump’s recent hideous remarks.

Again from the article: Trump failed to mention that 80 percent of girls and women crossing that border are raped as they make the journey. Those girls and women aren’t white. Gender is always raced, and race is always gendered.

Whiteness, then–the ‘purity’ of white womanhood–is being ‘protected’ violently by white men at the expense of non-white bodies, of all genders. This puts non-white women in a place of non-humanity and non-white men in a place of monstrosity. The problem isn’t non-whiteness; the problem is whiteness and how we live it out.

I refuse to stand by idly while white men try to protect me from a non-existent threat. I refuse to be made to sit on a pedestal. I reject the comfort of that position, even as I recognize that I cannot opt out of a system that subjugates and oppresses without question. None of us are free until all of us are free.

From the article:So I’mma say that the pole here – flagpole though it were – still marks a liminal space of possibility for what Black resistance beyond respectability looks like. Bree Newsome’s Black girl body climbed a pole, quoting scripture, to take down a flag that is emblematic of so much violence enacted on the Black body by the U.S. nation-state. Her act exploded every simple discourse we are currently having about what faith demands, about what decorum dictates that we should accept, about what are acceptable forms of resistance for (cis) Black women’s bodies.

Respectability politics would have the marginalized–women, non-white people, non-cis folks, non-hetero folks, etc–behave exactly like cisgender, heterosexual, white men in order to have the ‘benefits’ of existing. Bree Newsome took this notion and turned it on its head. As she scaled a pole, she recited Scripture. As she ripped down a symbol of violence, she claimed no fear. In the face of police–in the face of far too much police brutality against non-white bodies–she peaceably resisted and gave herself over.

Having read both this article and the one above it, I am struck afresh by the violence against non-white bodies, by the supposed protection of white women, by our (white women’s) complicity-via-silence.

From the first article again: It was, and remains, necessary for white women to decry the violence that is done in our name. It is on us to dismantle racism with just as much commitment as we dismantle sexism, for one cannot happen without the other.

We have work to do. We must break our silence. We must not sit passively by while our white womanhood is ‘defended’ from a threat that does not exist. We must uplift the very real threats that do exist–of racism, of sexism, of the kyriarchy.